12 Days Of Giving: spcaLA — The Results Show

During the “12 Days of Giving” series here highlighting various awesome and local organizations that deserve your considerations and donations, I wrote about a 137-year-old institution near and dear to my heart (and my bank balance seeing as I work there): the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Los Angeles (spcaLA).

In that post, I talked about the ginormous difference between spcaLA and the ASPCA (whose heart-wrenching ads are all over the end-of-year airwaves), and at the end I threw in a twist by promising to donate to spcaLA the spare change my wife and I have collected in that half-gallon jug pictured at left (click to biggify) over the last five or so years, and also to donate it in honor of whoever came closest to the amount all that coinage added up to.

I was actually surprised I didn’t get a few more stabs at the amount, but I’m nevertheless thankful to have received the following guesses in the comments to that post:

Frazgo: $72.96

JozJozJoz: $89.27

LucindaMichele: $82.50

Jodi Kurland: $65.37

Alexandra Apollini: $89.23

BikingInLA: $97.13

DavidDavidDavidDavidDavid: $87.84

After the jump, find out what it took to get the coins counted, who the honoree is and how totally far off from the actual amount they all were…

I kid you not, it took not one but two Coinstar kiosks yesterday morning in order to tally up the total. I first hauled the 16.6-pound jug o’ coins to the nearest machine, which happened to be the Echo Park Vons. I commenced emptying and enjoying the jingle jangle of the process, but with barely a quarter of the jug down, the infernal contraption said “Whhhhhoooaaaaa, dude! I’m full! I can’t eat another coin!” and promptly shut down, leaving me the ignominious task of scooping up a whole mess of uncounted coinage back into the jug, before heading to the nearest cashier with my first voucher, which after Coinstar’s 10.9% cut (the bastards) came out to $33.21.

Knowing there was a Coinstar kiosk at the Silver Lake Ralphs on Glendale Boulevard, I beelined it over there hoping that machine might be hungry enough to eat all the money I had left to feed it. Sure enough it gobbled up every last penny, nickel, dime, quarter,and even one old Susan B. Anthony dollar (holler!), and afterward in a bit of shock at the unexpected amount I headed over to a cashier with that voucher and walked away (again, minus Coinstar’s 10.9% “processing fee”) with triple digits in the form of $102.25.

Below are snaps I took of the two vouchers, showing a combined gross of:

One Hundred Fifty Two Dollars and Three Cents (aka $152.03)

Daaaaang! Which means the commenter who came closest is BikinginLA, better known as the inimitable Ted Rogers who is as much lover of things on two wheels as he is creatures with four feet. Congratulations Ted, I’ll be making the donation of the net amount of $135.46 to spcaLA, and listing it in your honor.